The drills were elective. Besides history they included civics, English, health and sanitation, geography, home economics, agriculture, horticulture and good roads. Four were to be chosen from these, the four most suitable to the district’s needs.
Arithmetic was a popular study.
English was one of the most popular drills, as well as one most needed. The letter “g,” so often ignored by illiterates, in “ing” was reinstated to its proper dignity and use through drills on such words as “reading,” “writing,” “spelling,” “talking,” “singing,” “cooking,” “sewing” and others with a similar ending. Words commonly mispronounced in the community were made the subject of a drill. Such words as “seed,” “crick,” “kiver,” “git,” “hit,” “hyeard,” “tuk,” “fust,” “haint” and “skeered,” were pronounced repeatedly until the right habit was formed, and the most glaring monstrosities of pronunciation were weeded out. A language conscience was created where none had existed before, and a beginning was thus made toward improving bad English—a beginning which, though but a pathway blazed, was expected to lead out into the broad highway of better, if not perfect, speech. This was long before the crusade for better speech in America was inaugurated with its “National Better Speech Week.”
It was surprising how readily these grown folk mastered certain subjects. Despite the fears of some educators that violence was being done to psychology in the attempt to teach them, the grown folk learned, and learned with ease. One eminent psychologist, who early gave encouragement to the movement, wrote me saying,—“In the moonlight schools you are demonstrating what I have always believed, that reading, writing and arithmetic are comparatively easy subjects for the adult mind.” Some educators, however, declared preposterous the claims we made that grown people were learning to read and write. It was contrary to the principles of psychology, they said. While they went around saying it couldn’t be done, we went on doing it. We asked the doubters this question, “When a fact disputes a theory, is it not time to discard the theory?” There was no reply.
The memory subjects were the most difficult for these adult students. They had passed the “golden memory period,” most of them, many years ago, and though they had memorized ballads, folk-lore and recipes to some extent, nevertheless, memory was in them a thing practically untrained.
They were taught only a few memory gems. The first one was from Whittier’s poem, “Our State.” It was the motto at the head of the little newspaper which they used for a reading text:
The riches of the Commonwealth
Are free, strong minds and hearts of health,
And dearer far than gold or grain